There is both beauty and fear in any new beginning. In the spirit of feeling and validating all of our feelings, not just the pretty ones, we honor that in any new start, there’s room for both unlimited possibility and a deep un-knowing of what is to come.
The beginning of something may have lived in our minds and dreams for a long time, or it may have sprung up from the shadows; a swift change in a course of direction that we didn’t see coming. A new start can be long awaited and anticipated; slow and deliberate in its development, or a rush of time that blurs the days and nights together in its wake and leaves us unsure of who we are or where we are now.
The beauty of beginnings lies in the spirit of possibility. The possibility that things can go differently than they had before. There is a spirit of excitement that comes with a new start, the smell of newly sharpened pencils, fresh paint, and new shoes. The idea that whatever has come before, didn’t and doesn’t have the last word, that there is always a new chapter to write, if we choose to write it.
There is also the unknown; how will this chapter go? Will new classmates or workmates or partners like or even love us? Will we get hurt or rejected? Will we rise to the challenge, or will we fall and decide whether to stay there or to get back up? Starting something new brings with it the fact that we don’t know what the day-to-day will look like, and we certainly don’t know if the ending is a happy one.
So, in the moments when the unknown outweighs the excitement, how do we begin? There’s no set way. We simply take the next step, and the next, and the next. We put on the new shoes and walk into or out of the room. We pick up the new pencils and write our names, or we flip the pencil and erase our mistakes. We boldly hang our pictures on the freshly painted walls, risking that they will be crooked; we hang them up anyway.
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